Friday, 26 August 2016

Cilician Armenians Emerge From The Dark

Cilician Armenians Are Ready

CinC Essex Miniatures trio, CRU29, MOG1 & Unknown

Following on from my post of the 11th August I am happy to report that my Cilician Armenians are finally finished. I bought them off EBay on 1st August as a painted army consisting of 63 mounted and 248 foot.

What was in the box of infantry

The painting on the infantry was to a reasonable standard but the mounted were not. There were ten elements of Ps O archers which were of no use to me so I managed to sell these on to someone in the club after adding magnetic basing to them and retouching their sides to blend it in which reduced my purchase price by £20-00.

Of the 63 mounted 12 of them went straight into my Early Armenian/Parthian collection after magnetic basing and edging as there was no way they were suitable to use as Bedouin being that they were Horse Archers. It was clear that the person selling this army have thrown together what ever mounted figures he could to create an army to sell. Of the other 51 mounted three were damaged beyond repair and 21 so badly painted they were only fit for stripping back to bare metal. This left me with 33 mounted that needed to be repaired and retouched whilst the paint stripper took effect. After comparing the numbers of figures to the list I realised that I was still short of suitable mounted figures as well as a smaller number of foot figures. I did a quick order to Essex Miniatures for £45-00 and got on with the repairs and removing lots of the infantry from their bases ready for rebasing once I have match painted the new missing figures I had ordered.

The army requires three generals and luckily I also had a trio of Museum Miniatures knights in my spares box which turned out to be perfect to use as the optional upgrade that the generals can be from Irr Kn F to Irr Kn O - more of him later. The army has an eclectic mix of mounted troops a lot of which are old Minifigs and some Essex Miniatures. I am unable to identify the Minifigs castings but after retouching the figures repainting their shields and adding some waterslide transfers I created I am very pleased with the overall effect. To finish off the generals I created some suitable Cilician Armenian standards.

The four generals including the Museum Miniatures trio on far left Irr Kn O & Irr Kn F

Three Irr Kn F elements Essex CRU29

Irr Kn F Essex trio on left, nine old Minifigs

Eight Irr Kn F elements Old Minifigs

Moving onto the infantry contingent the DBM and DBMM list allow for 56 elements of Irr Sp I or Irr Ax O and 20 elements of Irr Bw O or Irr Ps O. I cannot see me ever needing to field this many Spearmen or Auxilia and have suitable casings in my Feudal collection to bulk out the army if necessary because I can rationalise this as them using some Crusader States infantry to expand out the army if pressed.

The army out of the box didnt have enough spearmen and archers so part of the Essex order contained more of these to enable me to create a uniform look to the army. I already have plenty of additional suitable auxilia to use for this army if necessary.

14 of the 16 Irr Sp I elements of Essex AEA17 Spearmen

12 elements of Irr Sp I Unknown make

Moving on to the large number of archers this army can have meant I needed to paint up lots more figures to match to ensure it didn't look like a mess of different troop types.

20 Irr Bw O elements Essex AEA18 Archers

20 Irr Ps O elements Essex AEA12 Archers

Next up is the Auxilia, the box contained a total of 22 elements. I decided that apart from some light retouching. repainting their shields and adding magnabasing that these figures were good enough to use almost right out of the box. The figures came in two batches, half of which included some figures wearing metal helmets and the other half without. I am unsure of their make so cannot at present add to them. Update been advised the Auxilia are a mix of Essex Miniatures CRU7 and CRU10 mix.

Apparently probably a mix of Essex Miniatures CRU7 & CRU10 figures

Finally there were a couple of spare elements in the box that were based up as dismounted cavalry. One of which is useful to use as a Irr Bd S General for when the Irr Kn O dismounts. They are not particularly well painted and I will replace them in due course with other figures in my Feudal collection.